Josh Valman started designing robots when he was just 10 years old. “I’ve always liked taking things apart,” he explains. “My father was a chemical engineer. When I was two, he found me scribbling all over plant drawings for Shell. I understood pressure systems before I really understood how to read.”

When he was 13, Valman sent his life savings of £500 to China to have his drawings turned into real components. “They were machined from scratch to my specifications,” he says. “I built my first robot and haven’t looked back since.”

This was the beginning of Valman’s love affair with engineering. He began working as a freelance consultant for multinational firms when he was just 15. “I would come in from school and take conference calls with China,” he recalls.

“No one knew how old I was. The work kept coming in and at one point I was earning £10,000 a week.” Now the product designer, still just 19, has just closed a £250,000 seed funding round to value the company at more than £1m, just six months after he launched.

The teenager is the boss of RPD International, which allows companies of all sizes to pay a fixed retainer to access a flexible supply chain, comprising designers, engineers and distributors. “We can help any company to make any product,” he says. “A six-person company can deliver as much as a 2000-person company now..”